Category: Events (Local)

UNC Visitors’ Center to launch ‘Priceless Gem’ tours on Friday, Sept 12, 2011
The Visitors’ Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will begin offering a new series of free tours for the public on Friday (Sept. 16). Tours in the “Priceless Gem Series,” (which takes its name from a line in the UNC alma mater “Hark the Sound”) will be given most Fridays at 3 p.m., starting from UNC Visitors’ Center, located inside Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, 250 E. Franklin St.

University experts will lead these distinctive walking tours on various topics of interest. From archeology to architecture to the African-American experience to today’s sustainability issues, tours will offer a range of information and perspective.

As many of you may know, October is Family History Month. In celebration of this, D-OGS will be hosting a table at a neighborhood flea market hosted by a local subdivision that many of us live in – Parkwood of Durham. See the announcement below:

D-OGS will have a table at the Parkwood Flea Market in which we will sell gently used items particularly genealogy books, magazines, software, etc, that our members have donated in addition to back issues of our Trading Path journal. We will also have membership brochures on hand to give out to interested parties. Please talk to Karen Vance kvance112@nc.rr.com if interested in donating or manning the table during this event.

29 October 2011 Raleigh, NC at the North Carolina Museum of History, 5 East Edenton Street, Raleigh, NC 27601: Researching Your Ancestors in Colonial Times will be presented by the North Carolina Genealogical Society in conjunction with the NCGS Annual Meeting. The Speaker will be Barbara Vines Little, CGSM, whose talks will provide the information that can move your research to the next level.

Working With Colonial Records – A look at how to effectively deal with the vagarities of colonial government and the lack of records.

Land and Inheritance – Understanding the law in regard to inheritance, especially of land, is an important tool in interpreting records. Without a thorough understanding of how real and personal property was inherited especially in an intestate estate or under the rules of primo-geniture and entail, it is impossible for the researcher to make accurate assumptions of relationships based upon the inheritance of land.

Backtracking Your Migrating Ancestor: A Methodology That Works – When an ancestor suddenly appears in an area with no obvious clue to his origin, many researchers are lost. Yet carefully combing for clues in the area in which he is found will often provide the answer. This lecture provides a framework for researchers to follow in their search for their ancestor’s origin.

Taxes: Milk Them for All They’re Worth! – Most often used as substitute census, tax lists, when interpreted properly, can provide a wealth of information on individuals, their occupations, families, lifestyles, and antecedents.

Historians interested in pre-Revolutionary Alamance County will want to
join local author Carole Troxler at the Mebane Public Library on
Tuesday, September 20th at 7:00pm. Dr. Troxler will talk about the topic
of her latest book, “Farming Dissenters: The Regulator Movement in
Piedmont North Carolina”. Here is the book summary from Amazon:

The Regulator Movement grew from the frustration of North Carolina’s
backcountry residents–frustration with local officials who ran their
offices for personal gain, disregarding the rights of the
residents–frustration with a complicated land grant system that did not
guarantee clear ownership of land–frustration with a colonial
legislature dominated by eastern political and economic interests. In
this new study, Dr. Carole Troxler steps back more than two decades
before the pivotal Battle of Alamance (May 16, 1771) to examine the
issues and their cultural context that fostered the Regulator Movement
and determined its progress, and political aftermath. This is the story
of local government more interested in its needs than those of its
constituents–and of settlers steeped in the Dissenter religious culture
who drew on its political orientation to risk activism often cited as a
prelude to the American Revolution.

Dr. Troxler is also the co-author of “Shuttle and Plow: A History of
Alamance County, North Carolina”.

Palatines to America is a genealogical society for those researching German
speaking ancestors, with emphasis on migration from the Germanic regions of
Europe to North America. For more information, visit their website at
www.palam.org.

The September (D-OGS) meeting will be held on Wednesday evening, 7 September 2011 at 7p.m. at St Matthew’s Episcopal Church, 210 St. Mary’s Road in Hillsborough, NC.

Visit their webiste here: http://www.stmatthewshillsborough.org/

There is parking behind the church and across from the church on St. Mary’s Road.

We will be listening to Rev. Dr. N. Brooks Graebner speak about the historic cemetery at the church and take a guided tour of some of the graves of the prominent and historic persons buried there.

About the cemetery:
The historic St. Matthew’s cemetery is the final resting place for many early leaders of North Carolina, especially those from Orange County. There are 396 marked graves and 11 unmarked. Those buried here include members of local families including Cain, Cameron, Roulhac, Turner, and Webb.

About the Speaker:
The speaker will be the Rev. Dr. N. Brooks Graebner, Rector at St. Matthews. Rector Brooks Graebner came to St. Matthew’s in the spring of 1990, having previously served as the Assistant to the Rector at St. Peter’s in Charlotte, North Carolina. He moved to North Carolina in 1973 to attend Duke Divinity School, graduating with a Master of Divinity degree in 1976. He then continued his studies at Duke, earning a Ph.D. in American Religious History in 1984. By then, Brooks had become an Episcopalian and had entered the ordination process in the Diocese of North Carolina, a vocational decision very much shaped by the time he spent as organist & choir director of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Durham, his sponsoring parish. Before ordination, Brooks also completed a year at Virginia Theological Seminary and a year in the Chaplain Residency Program at UNC Hospital in Chapel Hill.

Brooks’ love for the study of church history is very much reflected in his extra-parochial involvements. He currently serves as the Historiographer of the Diocese of North Carolina. He is a past president of the local historical society and for ten years served as an officer & director of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church. He teaches Anglican and Episcopal history in several formation programs of the diocese. He also is a steering committee member of the Durham-based Pauli Murray Project, which is devoted to honoring and extending the influence of this civil rights pioneer, historian, lawyer, and Episcopal priest.

About the church (taken from the web-site):
The General Assembly of North Carolina originally constituted St. Matthew’s Parish in 1752 as the established church in the County of Orange. The parish was reorganized in 1824, and the present church building was begun in 1825 and completed in 1826. It was consecrated by the Right Reverend John Stark Ravenscroft, the first Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina on May 21, 1826.
Letters of the period indicate that William Nichols, principal architect of the old state capital which was burned in 1831, designed the present structure. As far as we are able to learn, St. Matthew’s is the oldest Gothic Revival church building still standing in North Carolina. Nichols worked mainly in the Greek Revival idiom, but he knew Gothic work from both his native England as well as from visits to the northern United States. Nichols also designed Hillsborough’s Masonic Hall (1823). He left North Carolina in 1827 to work throughout the South, and died in Mississippi in 1853. Nichols is being increasingly recognized as one of the South’s finest antebellum architects.
There were others involved in the building of St. Matthew’s Church. As St. Matthew’s first Senior Warden, Francis Lister Hawks, grandson of the architect of Tryon Palace, likely had a great deal of input regarding the building. Walker Anderson, who was a member of the first vestry and who was the nephew of the great North Carolina jurist-legislator, Duncan Cameron, seems to have been the real project director. The master mason was Samuel Hancock, under whose hand John Berry, prominent local architect/builder, learned his skills.
St. Matthew’s Church has had many alterations throughout the years; the tower was added c. 1829 and under the leadership of the Rev. Moses Ashley Curtis, Rector from 1856 to 1872, extensive remodeling of the church was carried out. The east end was enlarged for a recessed chancel with triplet window, sacristy and organ room, and the exposed beam roof was raised c. 1868; the spire was added and the wainscoting was replaced c. 1875. A marble plaque in the narthex records the installation of the bell in 1878 as a Confederate Memorial.
St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
The tracker-action organ, Opus number 1169, was purchased in 1883 for $1,040 from the Boston firm of Hook and Hastings. The organ is housed in an oak case and has seven ranks. It was removed from the church building on June 2, 2004 and completely restored by John Farmer, Pipe Organ Builders of Winston-Salem, NC. The organ returned to a newly refurbished organ room and was rededicated to God’s service on May 5, 2005.
The church building was thoroughly renovated and repaired in 2007-2008 and rededicated on St. Matthew’s Day, September 21, 2008.

This month’s regular D-OGS Meeting will be held on Wednesday evening, 3 August, 2010 at 7
p.m. at Christ United Methodist Church in Southern Village, south of Chapel Hill on US 15-501.
The street address is 800 Market Street. Here is a map: http://tinyurl.com/66r6er6. There is
parking behind the church. Enter the back of the church through a door which opens into the large
meeting room.

Our program will be our annual “Show and Tell”. Have you found that missing relative? Have you
broken through the “brick wall” you have been banging into for years? Do you have some
recommendations for new data sources? Bring your best stories about what you have been doing
over the last year. We will draw numbers to see who get to go first. Please keep your comments to
about 5 minutes so that we will have time for everyone to participate.

In the past, we have used this meeting to “swap” unused or unneeded items with our D-OGS
members. If you have magazines, books, CDs, software, computer hardware or any other
materials that you would like to share with someone else, bring the “goodies” with you to this
meeting. We will set up tables to spread out the “goodies” so folks can shop. If you don’t want to
take your old stuff home, anything left over will be donated to the upcoming Parkwood flea market
where D-OGS will be participating in October.

Last weekend several members of my local genealogical society, Durham-Orange Genealogical Society (D-OGS) met in the small conference room of the Chapel Hill Library to watch live streaming videos of some of the presentations that were broadcast from the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree in Burbank, California!

I brought in some sweet tea, lemonade, cheese and crackers and homemade cookies for snacks! I hooked up my laptop to the projector that was provided by the nice library staff and started up the live stream of video and audio projecting on the somewhat smaller than usual, but workable, screen.

Photo of my laptop, projector and projector screen. The audio from the presentation came from my laptop. Had there been more people, I probably would have needed an additional set of speakers hooked up to my laptop. I will remember this for next time. Photo by Ginger R. Smith, 11 June 2011

The first live broadcast started promptly at 11:30 am with Lisa Louise Cooke talking about “Google Search Strategies for Genealogists.” If you were watching this video at home, you might have heard Mrs. Cooke give us a shoutout – she mentioned that there was a genealogy society in North Carolina meeting at the local library to watch some live streaming video presentations together! Talk about getting the word out there! All the way from Burbank California! We all waved back to her on the video screen and I was just tickled pink!

I don’t know about all of you, but I thought I knew everything there was to know about performing Google searches. Boy was I wrong! Did you know you could put dates in your searches? Just type in Ginger Smith 1990…2011 and the search results will come up with my name and then it will bold all of the years mentioned in this time frame?

And did you know there was a synonym search using the ~ ?

What about the *? You can use this between two words in your search to catch phrases that might have an additional term between them.

Another feature that I found interesting was the use of the related tool. If you find a website that you like and you want to find other pages just like it, you can type in your search related:http://www.webaddress.com to find other pages just like it. This can be useful for finding those family pages.

These are just some of the things I learned in Mrs. Cooke’s class. I wasn’t the only one who took several NEW things away from this class!

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Photo of Curt Witcher, Senior Manager for Special Collections at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN. Photo from the SCGS Jamboree Page.

The next video we watched was by the Allen County Library Director, Curt Witcher, who was to talk about “Using Ancestral Origins As a Genealogical Research Key.” We had several technical difficulties with this video, as did the several hundred other people who tuned in to watch. Luckily the people at home also had access to a live chat room, so we were able to share in the experiences of the technical difficulties. We used this time to discuss some of the “business” of our society and our website. We have formed a great partnership with a local guy named Allen Dew who has created an outstanding website cataloging the local cemeteries in North Carolina and Virginia. On his website, cemeterycensus.org, he has links to each NC county, with each cemetery listed and transcripts posted along with photos and links to google maps and directions on how to find the cemeteries.

Not all counties are complete at this time, but the counties of Durham and Orange, and the present day counties of Chatham, Caswell, Randolph, and Wake that were originally part of Olde Orange County are already populated with over hundreds of cemetery listings.

Allen also has links and helpful hints about how to inventory, photograph, and upload information about cemeteries you run across and would like to make available on the website.

And because we have a cool little partnership going on with him now, he added this nifty little banner with a link to our society’s website:

Check it out! Cemeterycensus.org.

OH, and back to the Curt Witcher video, he talked a lot about determining the ethnicity of your ancestors and then learning all you can about that particular ethnic group in that part of the country in which they lived. He recommended that you seek out ethnic-specific newspapers and journals.

He also emphasized that our ancestors stuck together in their tight little ethnic groups: they emmigrated together, they settled together and they migrated together, so if you cannot find your ancestor, look for their neighbors or other members of their close ethnic group. Also, if you are having trouble identifying your ancestor’s ethnic group, look at their religion for clues. They too will have records.

My faithful society members and I stuck around for the 3rd video in the series which was by David Lambert who spoke about “Researching Your Union Civil War Ancestors.”

We talked a LOT during this presentation about the various records David displayed on the screen and exchanged stories about what we had found – or not found – on our own ancestors.

A good time was definitely had by all. I wrote this post to illustrate what you can do even as a little genealogical society. This didn’t take much to prepare – all I had to do was call the library to book the room and request a projector and screen, announce to the society members and cross post to other society newslists, and then wait for them to show up! I probably would have had more people show up if it weren’t summertime and if I had had more advanced notice about this event. I found out about the live streaming of these videos being offered on Monday, waited two days to hear back from the library and announced on Wednesday for this meeting on Saturday.